The central thesis of
Professor Bishop’s argument is that what teachers most need to know about is classroom
practices that promote good learning
outcomes for children, reminding us of course that we don’t need to spend
thousands of dollars on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in order to determine
whether such transformations are occurring. We simply need to observe, and in some cases assess learning through rather more
paedestrian and far less expensive measures, e.g. teacher or clinician
judgement, or the use of criterion or norm-referenced tests.

All experience (or
lack there-of) influences the brain and its neural networks, but our recent ability
to “view” the brain at work seems to have blinded us to the fact that from the
moment of birth, sensory and motor experiences “sculpt” neural pathways - and
this occurs irrespective of whether we can view the process. The advent of fMRI seems to have shifted our language from discussion about what neuropsychology contributes to our knowledge of learning, to what sounds, on the face of it like a more sophisticated paradigm - talk of neuroscience. In practice, fMRI-based neuroscience may just turn out to be the "fun sister" - interesting to be around, with some fancy (albeit interesting and diverting) accessories, but still to deliver on independent transformation of classroom practice.

Developmental (neuro)trauma and classroom learning

However there is a field
of neuroscience (for want of a better term!) which is of immediate translational relevance in the everyday classroom
and that is the field of developmental
trauma, as exemplified in the work of Professor
Bruce Perry, Professor Allan Shore,
Professor Besel
van der Kolk, to name a few. “Developmental trauma” refers to a collection
of adverse early experiences of neglect and/or abuse (collectively referred to
as maltreatment) which conspire to work against optimal development of the
human brain in the critical developmental period between birth and age 5. In Australia, in 2011-12, there were more than 250,000 notifications to child protection authorities, not all of whom will be victims of substantiated maltreatment, but by the same token, many cases go undetected and are not included in child protection databases. The bottom line though, is that classrooms in towns and cities across the country include children who are living in stressful, suboptimal environments with respect to their developmental needs.

Maltreatment
comes in a number of guises, compromising many aspects of the relational space in which language, cognition,
empathy, memory, and social skills need to be acquired, refined and rehearsed
over many years. Ideally, such learning occurs in the context of warm, trusting,
and reliable relationships with caring adults who provide a secure base from
which children can explore their world, and develop adaptive "working models" of how to interact and learn.

As the Russian psychologist
Lev Vygotsky taught us,
when adults (parents and later, teachers) can carefully scaffold the child’s early attempts at a particular task or skill, they
maximise success and gradually consolidate mastery. One only needs to think of
how an infant learns to walk, to see this scaffolding in action – parents provide
the necessary but minimal support needed for success and incrementally scale
this down until those first few tottery but independent steps are taken. Under
optimal circumstances, parents seem to have an infinite capacity for
scaffolding across a wide variety of developmental domains. Think for example, of
how parents co-construct narratives (often in as minimally intrusive a way as
they can) with a 5 year old who wants to tell Grandpa about her trip to the
park.

Image source: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/

Sadly, though, children
who are victims of maltreatment too often miss out on this scaffolding, and
instead learn that adults are unreliable, unpredictable, and sometimes unsafe
to be around. Such learning has negative implications for self-soothing,
forming trusting relationships, and virtually all aspects of cognitive, linguistic,
and social-emotional development that promote success in the early years
classroom. Children who have experienced maltreatment and/or vicarious trauma (e.g.
exposure to domestic violence) are often chronically stressed and hypervigilant to threat;
they may also be tired and hungry – hardly optimal conditions for cognitive and
linguistic engagement in classroom learning. Such children may appear to the
casual observer to be restless, fidgety, inattentive, reticent, disinterested,
and/or poorly motivated. The diagnoses that follow are many and varied.

So here we have a problem….

Unlike doctors, allied
health professionals, and psychologists, teachers are not typically taught the basics of neuropsychology during their training. In fact (and this is not a
criticism of teachers themselves of course) they are probably more likely to be
exposed to pseudo-science such as unhelpful and simplistic
models of “left brain-right brain” learning and so-called “learning styles”, than to scientifically derived models of how the brain is organised and develops during childhood. Maybe this is changing with time, but my experience in working with
classroom teachers in postgraduate training over the last 8 years has been that they are not
well-equipped with basic neuroscience knowledge.

…and the beginnings of a workable solution

It’s encouraging then, that
in recent years developmental trauma frameworks have been advanced for use by teachers
and others in contact with young children experiencing the corrosive
developmental effects of maltreatment. One such framework is that described by
Professor Bruce Perry, who explains the hierarchical organisation and
development of the central nervous system under optimal conditions, and the ways
in which maltreatment can disrupt healthy development and interfere with learning.

Put simply, this framework is built
around the way the brain manages its “house-keeping” (homeostatic or brainstem)
functions, takes in and relays information from the senses to higher centres, forms memories and
emotional associations, and finally organises, stores, and retrieves information
in order to respond adaptively to the surrounding world.

A blog on child and adolescent language, language competence and social disadvantage, early literacy instruction, youth offending, communication skills and the student doctor....and a few other bits and pieces.

Search This Blog

Follow by Email

About Me

I'm a Professor and Head of the La Trobe Rural Health School and live and work in Bendigo, central Victoria. My research passion is language and literacy competence - primarily as this pertains to vulnerability in early life.
Views expressed on this blog are my own.
I have recently published a book (released by J&R Publishing in March 2017) with Dr Caroline Bowen:
Making Sense of Interventions for Children with Developmental Disorders. A Guide for Parents and Professionals.
http://www.jr-press.co.uk/making-sense-of-interventions-for-childrens-developmental-disorders.html
Australian orders can be placed at:
http://www.sandpiperpublications.com.au/Making-Sense-of-Interventions-scp100568.html